As a music critic, I’ll never understand the appeal of a top 10 list. If you’re a music writer who gives all genres a fair shake (which I am), the list inevitably tends to look a lot like everyone else’s.
You’ll see Frank Ocean on there, Death Grips will make an appearance and Kendrick Lamar will round it all out. This is textbook-boring.
While these artists certainly deserve their accolades, there were many other records that came out in 2012 that you probably never heard, and they deserve equal time in the spotlight.
1. Monopoly Child Star Searchers: The Garnet Toucan
Recommended If You Like: Bruce Haack, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, Tangerine Dream
Photo © Underwater Peoples Records
Until very recently, I was of the opinion that there was no such thing as an album that “grows on you.” I believed that the listener would either like it or not upon first listen. Recently I’ve come around from this opinion, but the record that really sealed that idea shut for me was Monopoly Child Star Searchers’ The Garnet Toucan.
As one half of noise duo Skaters, Spencer Clark has stepped outside the noise genre and into an alternate reality, a parallel dimension where music is turned inside out and compressed together with the sounds of life.
Consider it free IDM (intelligent dance music) relative to regular IDM in the same way that free jazz is relative to jazz: Lo-fi discordant loops are strung together with little rhyme or reason, layers are forcefully flung over the soundscape, and it isn’t until the last puzzle piece is shoehorned in that the picture is complete.
Drone samples and old toy synths from the ’80s are interwoven at seemingly random intervals, and the sounds are interesting enough to keep you hanging on in order to realize the big picture.
Let Garnet Toucan ride in its entirety several times over for maximum enjoyment.
2. BNNT: _ _
RIYL: Shellac, The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower, Lightning Bolt
Photo © www.bnnt.pl
If you like noise rock akin to Shellac, Rapeman or even Times New Viking served up with political angles from the Eastern Bloc, look no further than BNNT. Their album _ _ packs enough sharp-edged riffs to make the listener think that Steve Albini was involved in
some way.
BNNT’s appeal is that it’s primarily a live act—music as real art and not just phony pen-to-paper art like hundreds of the band’s contemporaries. The album is cacophonous, out of control, cleverly sublimated and undoubtedly enjoyable if you have any sort of imagination.
While the album isn’t exactly something you’d put on at any kind of party, under any circumstances, it never claims to be such a thing. BNNT is also very much not a singles band, so once you’ve decided to play the record, you’d best be in it for the long haul or you’re cheating yourself.
Tracks like “Congolese Rebel Leader Thomas Lubanga Recruiting Children” are so full of clever riffs and sharp trumpet stabs that you’ll swear they’re veterans of the art-punk scene. They’re not—this album is their first release.
The music is smart and fiercely political—all the song titles read like news headlines—and is spliced with enough gritty samples and noise to feel like one of the purest, most blood-sweat-and-tears-soaked records you’ll ever hear.
3. Vladislav Delay: Kuopio
RIYL: Autechre, Kid 606, Hrvatski
Photo © Vladislav Delay Music
From the ice-encrusted land of Finland, Vladislav Delay creates some of the most strikingly broken IDM you’ve likely heard since Autechre. Imagine, if you will, lush analog bass and richly rendered synth cutlets, hand-mixed gently by a loving Finnish chef.
The amount of aural variety presented on Kuopio—his 12th record since 1999—is stunning, to say the least, and you may find it difficult to take in after just one listen. If you do, however, you will be handsomely rewarded.
Tracks like “Hetkonen” leave the listener scrambled and disoriented, but warm and familiar at the same time. A harmonically bountiful bassline is tossed into a blender on its slowest speed and allowed to be coarsely and gently chopped, slowly grinding the edges into
themselves.
Lightly flanged leads ebb and flow over the dissected bass and slowly bloom into precisely ordered chaos. Like The Garnet Toucan, Vladislav Delay’s cuts pay off in the end, and the journey there is just as fun as the outcome.
4. METZ: METZ
RIYL: Mclusky, The Jesus Lizard, Japanther
Photo © Sub pop records
Though BNNT’s _ _ has already made an appearance as the requisite noise-rock record on the list, METZ is a little more cohesive than that, and the result is probably the most accessible record on this list.
Hailing from Canada, METZ brings an energy-soaked garage-metal vibe to the table, much like the bulk of The Jesus Lizard’s output. The guitars are sharp and caustic, the bass rumbles and the drums are out-of-control loud. Though the instrumentation is frantic and bilious indeed, the vocals complement the band quite nicely, though they’re slightly subdued relative to the Hydra of clatter brought forth by the backing band.
Though only composed of three guys, METZ sounds like a full rock ensemble, and plays with the fury of three of them.
Even if the music sounds like it was recorded in one take by three very angry gentlemen, METZ’s self-titled album does not require a certain mood for a spin—the playing and songwriting are so good that the listener might not even notice that he or she is punching a series of holes in the wall.
Tracks like “Headache” are misleading since METZ doesn’t conjure up anything of the sort—instead bringing you a great rock song that is the “new alternative,” as much as it pains me to say such a corny thing.
5. Raime: Quarter Turns Over a Living Line
RIYL: Coil, Throbbing Gristle, Nurse With Wound
Photo © blackesteveblack.bigcartel.com
Every person in the musical know realized long ago that bands like She Wants Revenge and other nu-goth tomfoolery just didn’t cut it if you were truly dark. The answer for most people was Coil or Nurse With Wound if you had a really cool older sibling. Raime’s Quarter Turns Over a Living Line is as close as one is going to get to either, these days, without spinning the genuine product.
Beautifully constructed drones set the backdrop with some very inspired minimalist musique concrete on this, the band’s debut record. Living Line is a record that oozes uneasiness—nowhere on this album exists a time when the music doesn’t feel at once both beautiful and terrifying.
The sounds sit at either high or low frequencies—midrange is rarely used. This creates a genuinely creepy backdrop with metric tons of dead air in between; it’s enough to make you shiver with anticipation.